42 MOON OVER. ALANI ßEACH I T was unexpected, the way the moon appeared suddenly, after so long an absence, as though there had never been any clouds at all, as though the dust from the peeling hotels had not mingled wIth the gas steaming up through the land, had not risen to the low evening sky and hung there for months and months and months, pro- ducing a morose mood and physIcal danger and a distorted sense of time that was a feeling of perpetual twilight. In that twilight it had been impossible to judge distances, for example, or trace light to any simple source E v- erywhere in the sky there had been a stagnant phosphorescence, like a visible echo of artificial light. Then the moon came out, and the teasing glow van- ished in a minute, only lingering for a while in the pockets of bad land, the recent land built too far OUt into the harbor, too far into the marsh, where the gas con tin ued to rise, would always continue to rise. In the moonlight, it was possible to see from one end of the causeway to the other. People looked up. The moonlight showed the great hotels along the beach, their height intact, rising twenty or thirty stories, run- ning together (as it appeared from the causeway) like a crazy wall built to different heights and in different styles at different moments, like a wall with a purpose, a fortification. People moved at a faster pace after seeing the familiar buildings and did not mind so much just where they stepped. At the end of the causeway, at the place where the old highway had debouched into the A venida de las Palmas, the principal boulevard of the Spanish Colony, a great fat man, dressed in pleated pants that conformed with perfect accuracy to the eccentric bulge of his enormous stomach, walked around the rotting barricades, kept his shoes clear of the mud, kept step to a puffing rhythm he made with his breath. He did not look at the moon but looked, rather, at the shadows thrown by the old hotels across the A venida de las Palmas. HIS eyes moved from left to right, attending to ...ø" I i'" - I t f --- r -, , , j '^- '-.- ..." " ì ( \ t '1 !:; / ,,", : : :', " or...M"'/ -(&J -- , <-. - ,., . r; ..Y I -- _._-' ".;1: " .......;.... ..... ..... .; ' >> --.:; 11 J r ;; -, '\ '. ! , '8- . i .., v , r "0 . \ t /, r ] {- ... \ \ '" ' . C ",\ J \ ! "'" , "-. '0 "Damn 1t, when I say 'OPPos1ng counsels may approach the bench' I don't want high jinks'" DECEMßEI\ 3, I 9 7 9 the geometry of the shadows, while he kept up the puffing noise with his breath. He proceeded to the middle of the old Avenue, where there were two strips of land on which remained cer- tain hardy grasses and certain palms that had not rotted in the damp and, be- tween the two strips, a third, on which there was nothing. He walked in this third strip, seemed at home in this strip. He kept on at a steady pace that was different from the pace of the few other people on the A venue-less fur- tive, more like something confident running on tracks than like a man afraid of the night. At the intersection of the A venida de las Palmas and the A venida de los Alpes he made an easy curving turn left toward the water- fron t, toward the shadow of a hotel. Before entering the shadow, which was the shadow of the Hotel Merovin- gian, the greatest of the luxurious ho- tels of the old city, having been built to incorporate every luxury with every satisfaction of historical memory, hav- ing suffered a contraction and damage from the damp but stil] throwing a fine shadow, the large man stopped his puffing noise. Then he looked up quickly at the moon and went into the hotel. W HEN the moon came out, Ma- dame Ludovica saw it strike the mural in her room at the Merovin- gian and she looked at her watch, which was a man's watch, a big watch with a sensible leather strap, because Madame Ludovica was sensible about arne, and mail, and the way a writing table is ar- ranged, and the way bills are paid or not paid, and the way ex- ercise is taken or not taken, and because she was not vain. The time the moon ap- peared, Madame Lu- dovica was prepared to say with certainty, was 1. 0 :06 P.M. At one Inoment, she was look- ing at her mural and there was no moon. At the next (she did not shift her eyes meanwhile or blink), a powerful silver light came Into the room '\ ;;oC> ... t;"".o..: f ! i !